Trials Evolution Video Sets Hearts Aflutter And Brains Afire

So there’s going to be a sequel to one of best games ever to grace the Xbox 360. Sure, Trials HD was brutal, unforgiving, mean-spirited, and vicious, but underneath it all beat a warm fuzzy soul that just wanted to be loved, as expressed by blood sacrifice. Once you’d learned the ins and outs of handling the specially-tuned motocross bikes, getting across the obstacle courses in the quickest time became a process that looked like voodoo magic.

As fun as the dark arts are, though, there were some features that had room for improvement, and the latest video above plus some clarification from the developer show that not only was Redlynx listening, they had some ideas of their own on where to take things. The first and most obvious thing, of course, is getting out of the warehouse at last, but other features clearly shown in the video include both on and offline multiplayer, new game modes, crazier stunts, and enhanced community features.

Nice as it is to take the motorcycles outside, that last feature is the biggie. All user-created tracks are now accessible from a central library, with multiple search functions to filter by popularity, single or multiplayer, difficulty, and other unannounced variables. Tracks are tiny, too, taking up roughly 10kb of space, so building a respectable library promises to be fast and easy.

The weirdest new feature, though, looks to be the gameplay modes possible to create with the editor. Pinball makes a kind of sense, as does the Angry Birds clone, but the trailer also shows overhead car racing, first-person shooter, foosball, and even an arcade vertical shooter. That’s an odd assortment of content, and it’ll be interesting to see how the user community plays with it in the editor.

Trials Evolution is promising to be a huge new entry in the series, amping up the art design while delivering tons of new ways to fling your rider to his ragdoll-limbed doom. The release date is still a nebulous “Spring 2012”, so it’s still a few months off. In the meantime, here’s a 60FPS version of the video above to help keep anticipation high.